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Oracle and the End of Programming As We Know It
An anonymous reader writes "An article at Dr. Dobb's looks into the consequences of a dangerous idea from Oracle during their legal battle with Google: 'that Google had violated Oracle's Java copyrights by reimplementing Java APIs in Android.' The issue is very much unsettled in the courts, but the judge in this case instructed the jury to assume the APIs were copyrightable. 'In a nutshell, if the jury sides with Oracle that the copyrights in the headers of every file of the Java source base apply specifically to the syntax of the APIs, then Oracle can extract payment and penalties from Google for having implemented those APIs without Oracle's blessing (or, in more specific terms, without a license). Should this come to pass, numerous products will suddenly find themselves on an uncertain legal standing in which the previously benign but now newly empowered copyright holders might assert punitive copyright claims. Chief among these would be any re-implementation of an existing language. So, Jython, IronPython, and PyPy for Python; JRuby, IronRuby, and Rubinius for Ruby; Mono for C# and VB; possibly C++ for C, GCC for C and C++ and Objective-C; and so forth. And of course, all the various browsers that use JavaScript might owe royalties to the acquirers of Netscape's intellectual property.'"
We realize that we can all use Perl free of charge.
And with that, the internet fell, and mankind returned to the stone age.
I am John Hurt.
M.A.D. strategies don't work too well when one side is perfectly fine with destruction.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
And think about wine and reactOS, both using the Windows API.
And what about Java itself? It borrows a lot from C/C++.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Would this also possibly imply that a programmer needs to get a license to code in a specific language or to utilize a specific API? What is stopping Oracle from adding that to the JDK terms of use?
Wouldn't that mean that SQL is also copyright, completely destroying Oracle's business?
copyrighting code at all is a slippery slope that leads to nothing but hair-splitting. Even if the judge throws that particular claim out, then what? It's legal to copy the top-level calls of someone's API, but illegal to make underlying code that too closely resembles the original? It seems like any line that gets drawn here is going to be stupid and arbitrary, of the form "you are legally allowed to copy/re-implement a certain percentage of a copyrighted work, but no more than that percentage!"
Then you have a developer community whose primary incentive is to reinvent the wheel, not to develop new innovations on already-proven technology.
Oh wait, was this a "best use of exaggeration" contest?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The Judge is wrong.
Past jurisprudence (and a lot of it, mind...) has held that things that are purely functional are **NOT** Copyrightable.
This includes:
Build Scripts in general.
Header Files.
It's appealable and is VERY likely to be overturned on appeal.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The article claims Mono could be sued for copyright infringements, but actually Microsoft's public statements would count against any legal actions they could attempt against Miguel De Icaza.
If I had any concerns about .NET beyond the fact that Mono is pretty crappy and every Mono app ever written feels like it's being hosted under Wine, I'd be upset about this. But actually... from what I hear, C Sharp is a very nice programming language...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What is an API? It's basically an agreement about the ordering and identification of arguments either in memory or in series of network messages. If the judge actually finds that the API itself is copyrightable, then any computer program that writes to a standard interface is completely screwed. Write your own SMTP client? Sorry, that interface is copyright. Your own web server? Ditto.
APIs are the most functional part of computer programming -- they tell you 'this is how you communicate between parts A and B.' Yet, copyright is intended to only protect expression, not 'how' you do anything -- that's the realm of patent law. And while Oracle has patent claims mixed in here, Oracle isn't claiming a patent on the Java API.
I'm getting a distinct sense lately that we may be coming to the end of the era of innovation and the beginning of an era where it's essentially impossible to invent anything or innovate in any way unless you have a powerful corporate sponsor backing you. Unless you have a sponsor with a big patent collection of their own and deep pockets, how can the little guy possibly hope to defend himself against a bevy of lawsuits that cover even the most trivial or obvious of ideas these days?
Oracle here isn't even saying that their code was stolen, they're suing a company for writing their own code that implements the same *SYNTAX* as theirs.
Think of it as an age where the Wright brothers have just pulled their plane to a stop only to be greeted by an army of process servers serving them with dozens of expensive patent lawsuits on the shape of the prop, the design of the stick, even the IDEA of a "craft that flies."
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
This sounds an awful lot like the arguments that AT&T brought forth against Berkeley regarding the Unix System V vs. BSD arguments back in the early '80s.
AT&T rightfully lost those arguments, and BSD moved forward.
If Oracle succeeds with this, you can expect whoever holds the AT&T copyright nowadays to come after Linux and other Unix-like systems again, despite them just following what are now documented standards accepted by the industry.
Oracle's arguments should be rejected for the same reasons as AT&T's.
I was under the impression that Google had used the Java GPL source to compile their core jars. I later had it clarified that such is not the case; they used the Apache source.
A decision in favour of Oracle would throw the entire computing industry overboard and cause no end of harm to the industry.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Wouldn't Microsoft be able to go after anyone using their API without a license?
I will not stand for this!
Isn't there some legal precedent for copyright not having been defended over a period of time making the copyright moot? Clearly people have been implementing Java APIs for 1000s of years without law suits from Oracle or Sun. It is only recently that Oracle has decided to go after Google (specifically acquiring Sun to do so?) that these suits have been brought. Doesn't it make the suits baseless simply because of the fact of Sun/Oracle's ignoring the issue for so many years previous?
The type of "reimplementing" Google is alleged to have done has always been illegal unless the license terms of the software said otherwise. Had Google done a clean room reimplementation then they would have been in the clear, but instead they allegedly lifted code directly from Oracle's (copyrighted) APIs and used it without a license.
Many (most/all?) of the other languages mentioned have highly permissive licenses that expressly allow the sort of thing Google did. In many cases, the copyrighted portion of the language is little more than a set of standards to be followed, with the actual method for following those standards left up to whoever wants to write a compiler/interpreter for it.. Java has a much more restrictive license and always has, even when it was owned by Sun. Sun just didn't bother going after these sorts of suits. Of course, they didn't have the most powerful Internet company in the world making billions of dollars off a reimplementation of their code, either, at least not until they were already hemmorhaging money too fast to do anything about it.
What about all the sockets implementations, including Windows, that use the Berkeley sockets API? How about every implementation of the standard C library, which uses the API from the original Unix C library?
Or how about PCs themselves? IBM holds the copyrights to the original PC BIOS API. And not a single machine today uses a BIOS that was written with a license from IBM to reimplement the BIOS API. That was the whole point of the Phoenix and other compatible BIOSes. If the old holding in the case between IBM and Compaq/Phoenix is invalidated, can IBM enjoin the production of every PC system out there (including x86-based servers) and demand the destruction of all infringing copies (ie. every single PC-compatible system including x86-based servers) as allowed under USC Title 17 Section 503?
What exactly is implied by a "copyrightable API"?
Does this mean that we can copyright an API in a broad generic manner? i.e. a "web service that returns a JSON object of apps in an app store".
Or is the specific manner in which the API fetches the information the part that is copyrightable?
These days it seems that judges are at best arbiters of legal technicality. Their abject ignorance of so many everyday technical, scientific, and artistic issues is becoming a significant threat to our economy and our society.
I think the issue is more that we should despise US copyright law.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If implementing new libraries'n'stuff using someone else's APIs is a problem, it seems to me that a thing like wine and maybe even virtual machine software might need to pay license fees to the originators. Of course, the wine project may have an API license agreement with Microsoft, or Microsoft may have explicitly made their APIs freely available (or whatever applies here) but somehow, that doesn't sound like the Microsoft I've heard about over the years.
what will happen to the various UNIX-like operating systems, like Linux, the various BSD's, Solaris, Mac OS X etc? And what about WINE? ReactOS? Haiku? I guess these will all owe royalties too? This is a very dangerous road to go down, and if it does come to pass, the world will become a very different place, both legally and physically, and will most likely destroy open-source as we know it. But this is America we're talking about, they're fine relying on Microsoft Windows.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Whether APIs are protectable is a (not fully resolved) question of the law, and hence the judge's prerogative to decide. Most of us groklavians believe the judge is simply making sure there will be no retrial. If the jury says no copyright violation even under the assumption you can copyright APIs, then he doesn't have to make a decision about whether APIs may be protected by copyright. Surely whatever decision he makes will be appealed, so the jury might be able to make that portion of the case go away.
Many of these are wrong, because many of the examples there are not done "without a license". Many of them are licensed reimplementations of open source originals that share more than just APIs with the original. AFAIK, Rubinius, JRuby, and IronRuby aren't clean-room reimplementations of Ruby, they are parallel open source projects that use code (including standard library code) from the mainline Ruby project (and I'm pretty sure that code moves both directions.)
The judge told the jury to assume they were copyrightable to decide whether the cited instances were fair use or infringement. The judge reserved the question of whether they were copyrightable to himself to decide.
This judge is a lot smarter than the poster.
The judge told the jury to assume that APIs were copyrightable for purposes of their deliberation, for one reason, and one reason only.
The judge determined that whether APIs are copyrightable or not is a question of *law* not *fact*, and therefore was an issue properly decided by the judge. If the judge deliberates and determines that APIs are *not* copyrightable, then it doesn't matter what decision the jury makes. If he decides they *are*, then the jury's verdict will actually come into play.
Either (or both) decisions on the matter are open to appeal if Google (or Sun) disagrees with the decision(s) in question.
What will it mean for Google? What will it mean for Oracle? What will it mean for Java?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thank God you're still able to vote with your heart and apply Jury Nullification.
Sucks that most all jurors aren't fully informed, but it only takes one per jury.
If APIs are copyrightable, could other companies use that against Oracle?
The summary is wrong. The judge has not said that APIs are eligible for copyright; his ruling on that will come later. He merely asked the jury to determine whether Google copied the Java APIs, regardless of whether it was legal or not.
This makes sense from a procedural point of view. In the court system, juries determine matters of fact and judges determine matters of law. The judge knows that this case will be appealed regardless of how he rules, so he is playing it safe and making sure that the jury determines any matters of fact that may come to play during the appeals process to avoid a second jury trial later.
Whenever a trial like this comes up there are people talking about the worst possible case which could follow. Remember when SCO's claims had the media screaming that people using Linux at home could get sued? Regardless of which way this trial goes, it's not going to be the end of programming and it's not going to suddenly bring Python or C++ or other languages down. This is just silly.
A little mis-informed there--Google did a clean-room implementation of the code--yet they got sued--for implementing the java API and package structures, not for copying code. If you take a look at the differences between the kloc's, (Android ~15million lines, Java 5 ~2.8million lines), you have a hard time concluding that Google didn't do a clean-room implementation of Java. Since they couldn't call it Java, Google didn't--and therefore the product they produced is known as Android, in spite of the fact that it is very Java-like. Google deserves a win here and Oracle deserves a big loss for this foolishness.
Strike the clause "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Alternate amendment 28:
Strike the clause "securing for limited Times" and replace with "securing for one generation". Strike the clause "exclusive right" and replace with "limited & revocable monopoly".
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
To say a programming language is copyrightable is, to me, the very same as saying a spoken language is copyrightable. Imagine if you were to be exacted a fee for every english word you speak. Wouldn't that be ridiculous? Now, I can see a greedy company tolerably being able to require licensing for their specific interpreter or compiler (though this idea seems a bit ridiculous to me personally), but it makes no sense that the syntax should be allowed to be under such requirements. If this were allowed to pass through the legal system and continue on the same course, it could perhaps lend to the possibility of a day in the future where the very way you word your sentence could fall under copyright, and thus incur legal penalties or fees.
http://faazshift.blogspot.com/
Python and Ruby have been GPL from the beginning, unlike Java. I think that makes reimplementation of the API certainly legal, since using the code directly is legal as well. The "end of programming as we know it" seems like a stretch - maybe the "end of Java as we know it". Or am I missing something here?
If the judge rules in Google's favor, that means Oracle doesn't have to pay a lot of other people money (for non-Java codes and APIs that they use.) If the judge rules in Oracle's favor, other people have to pay a lot of money to Oracle. Either way Oracle wins, either by protecting their own properties or getting free reign to use everybody else's properties.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Copyright and patents are regulated monopolies. Monopoly is bad for business. Cancel the monopoly and reinvigorate business.
Do it in stages. Set expiry of patents and copyright to lesser of (say) 10 years or half of current unexpired period. And any new patent or copyright is for 8 years, and reduce that period by six months each successive year until copyrights and patents have disappeared.
The API is only the interface. Why would it be copyright infringement to code to one side of the interface, but not to the other?
Actually AT&T (actually USL, Unix Systems Laboratories which was spun-off from AT&T) and BSD settled because BSD countersued and USL had more to lose than BSD.
How does this apply to extending and changing a base class? If the API is copyrighted then you aren't allowed to extend one of those classes without a license.
Prove that your bool a(string b) is different than my bool a(string b).
As long as the copyright comments are there, I guess I own all obfuscated versions which happen to mangle as "a" which take a string and return a boolean.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Python is _not_ GPL. Python is much closer to the MIT or BSD license.
This would be fun to see since Oracle has Solaris. Whoever owns the Unix patents currently should sue Oracle with the exact same wording as Oracle is suing Google.
Considering Apple themselves were the ones who did most the maintenance on the Objective-C compiler in GCC, I doubt GCC would be in much trouble.
Not that the ruling isn't troubling in general.
They try not to make new precedent, if they don't have to for the most part. They'll rule on something more narrowly, when possible.
Imagine [a university] assignment to implement an API, only to find out its violating someone's copyright.
Such assignments have been around for over a decade, at least under The Tetris Company's interpretation of copyright.
Oops
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Would this also possibly imply that a programmer needs to get a license to code in a specific language or to utilize a specific API?
This has been true at least since 1984, when Atari added signature verification to the Atari 7800 firmware, and especially 1985, when Nintendo invented 10NES.
> I think the issue is more that we should ignore US copyright law.
Fixed that for you.
none
time for a union before the worker has the bear the costs of working they should the worker have to pay a lawyer to just to see if his work in ok under the law when it should be the employers cost.
Having spent 9 months in a court room watch my wife battle a false charge of cheating on a professional exam, I can tell you right now: we're f'ed. 1/2 of the juror's in her courtroom slept through the bulk of the arguments. The 1/2 that did pay attention, really looked like the most intellectual thing they had to do was shop in the magazine section of Wal-Mart.
I'd much rather the judge decide. Hell: put it up on Reddit or 4chan for a vote. At least (most) of those people understand what they're looking at.
The only correct solution is to end all copyright and actually patent laws, abolish them all.
There must be a point in time, when a discussion about this becomes unanimous instead of being a dividing issue
You can't handle the truth.
If that's the case then maybe mi MICR font is copyrightable which means VersaCheck could owe me a fortune. Any lawyers want to offer their services? try budatdotnetchecksdotcom.
You are transmitting information in a paricular way (I chose "the_man_has_a_green_hat"; if you want copyright at all, then you should allow me to force you to choose another description, such as "there_is_a_green_hat_on_his_head"). Hence, copyright on an API seems quite plausible.
However, sound public policy demands interoperability. Interoperability, in turn, requires copying the names of types and methods in system libraries. Otherwise, applications that expect the copyrighted method names will not run correctly.
Look and feel of an application is not copyrightable. Microsoft fought apple over this a long time ago and won. Apple had claimed Windows infringed the look and feel of Mac OS. That precedent is one really good thing MS has done for the world.
These languages were released under GPL so I don't think their exact APIs would require a paid license...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Every time I see Oracle, I see red.
Mozilla enforcing a copyright on JavaScript.
Because the coding "to the other side" is being done by developers employed by the copyright holder? I assume that Oracle won't sue its own programmers.
What about EMCAScript, which is, essentially the standard that javascript implements (but possibly extends)? Is a standard the same as an API?
I see a lot of crossover between "core language" and "api" in these discussions. Java, of course, is probably useless without certain APIs. But these points really show how messy issues like this become when you involve copyright. To me, it really does highlight the absurdity of the notion of intellectual property. It's such a vague concept.
Isn't this why M$ had to invent C#? Didn't they get into trouble hwen they implemented a bastardized version of Java that only worked on Windows?
What exactly is implied by a "copyrightable API"?
I've been assuming that a claim of copyright in an API refers to a claim of copyright in the set of signatures (method names, argument types, argument order) that the API provides.
... Why It's Darl McBride and SCO coming back in zombie form..
If this sets a precedent I hope whoever can charge extortion fee's for C and GCC really sticks it to Oracle while giving others who don't abuse patents / copyright a free ride.
I don't know about the BSDs, but Linux is probably safe because Novell, the owner of UNIX, distributes openSUSE, a Linux distribution, under license from Linus Torvalds, FSF, and countless other contributors.
Well, actually, I'm more wondering about the side of people USING the API. Oracle is suing google for implementing the API.
Is there potential trouble if a language has a ISO/ANSI/IEEE standards document? Those typically have copyright assigned to the standards body...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
People do this because "the worst possible case" has happened in the past. See, for example, Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music (draconian damages for unintentional infringement by a songwriter) or Capitol v. Thomas (draconian damages for non-commercial file sharing).
Why would Oracle or other API owner want to sue some random guy who built an app?
For the same reason Capitol Records would want to sue Jammie Thomas, or Ronald Mack's music publisher (Bright Tunes Music) would want to sue George Harrison.
seriously go away already you ruined SUN and everything they've created
What confuses me is the MS got sued (and lost) when trying to add Windows specific additions to Java. Why does it seem ok for Google to add Android specific features?
You're taking a fairly clear case, such as Google's use of Java APIs (which are being used by Google as if they were completely free and under public domain, even though a really big chunk of Oracle's business is in tight integration of Oracle database products with Java, which is technically their property as it was Sun's), and trying to extend it to cases that are really, really unclear. The owners of C suing C++? What are you talking about? Someone...maybe one of the various Unix variation's owners...who owns some of the algorithms behind the stdio apis suing Bjarne Stroustrop? Random companies? And wouldn't they get sued themselves for deriving from earlier works if that were true? That's highly unclear. Just like it is with a lot of those other technologies you rattled off, many that are at least partially IN the public domain and can be derived from as is their nature as object oriented languages.
In a nutshell, I know how many of you are Android fanboys and I understand that there will be some who whine about Oracle suing Google over their misuse of their technology, but basically anyone even slightly familiar with Android's Java implementation knows that it's not quite "real" Java. And Microsoft got their pants sued off for doing basically the same thing (and people didn't complain so much about the end of programming as we knew it because it was Microsoft), so there is certainly a precedent for this lawsuit. Google just needs to remove all that Java from Android and replace it with their own framework. Other mobile operating systems have done that already. Everyone who knew anything knew this was going to happen, but Android got too big, too fast, and by doing so they would break a huge number of third party apps (as in, probably all of them) and anger a lot of vendors who've been selling systems with Android on them. That's the main reason why Google would settle this case and pay up if it keeps going. However, it's awful doubtful to me that the Netscape people will have a solid case to sue everyone who uses javascript, and that Bjarne Stroustroup will get sued for C++ by some Unix property holder. Any judge would throw that out because there's no clear cut case there with companies sitting on those properties that they are being negatively impacted by the "misuse" of one of their properties (and that's even if their patent holds up under review anymore).
The judge may be working in parallel with the jury.
Call me silly, but I don't think Novell would have spent the last half of the previous decade indemnifying Linux users and defending it's UNIX copyrights if it intended in turning around and suing them for the exact same thing SCO was trying to do.
It is a zero sum game at this point. If this actually becomes precedent, Oracle would get obliterated, along with everybody else. Plenty of languages have come before Java and you better believe there is some major api overlap. I cannot wait to watch the world burn when Oracle is forced to pay a 50 million dollar license for the use of the copyrighted ToString() function.
is the most backward, selfish and anti-progress idea ever. To think that the only time anyone would solve a problem would be if they had an enormous financial reward coming their way. What about the benefits of solving the problem itself? Is that not enough anymore?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Even if they copied, it may be considered fair use. The judge ruled that all 166 APIs need to be considered as the work in question, and as I understand it Google only implemented 37. There are other issues to consider as well (read the whole thing at groklaw if you are interested).
Since the jury will have ruled on the premise that the APIs are protected by copyright, and since whatever the judge rules on the legal question is bound to appealed by one side or the other, the question of fact will have been resolved by the jury if it turns out to be relevant either based on the trial judges decision or based on an appellate decision.
Because the trial jury will have decided the issue, the likelihood of further proceedings being necessary after appeal will be reduced.
One might read this as an indication that the judge is going to rule against APIs being protected, since nothing would be saved by this if he was going to rule in favor of them being protected. But if he issued that ruling before the questions were put to the jury, then the question couldn't be included in the jury instruction, since it would no longer be a relevant question of fact.
And this is why the waited for Ritchie to die before launching the suit. :P
After all, they stole the entire Java syntax and some of the API from C and C++. Some of that was, of course stolen from other languages. In the end, maybe we should all pay royalties to Boole for coming up with the binary arithmetic it all boils down to.
What more do you need? (I know, my contributions [lately] have been minimal) Stick to free Beer and Speech - as tangle footed as we have become, it will be an extraction as major as Linux itself. But find something to swear on, and from now on, it is free, or I don't do it. Yeah, difficult. Say Ohhhhm with rms as often as needed. Oh yea, most "free" programmers work at ACME Software Products - gotta feed the kid. But can't you convince the Boss that staying away from lawsuit encumbered software (LSE-tm) will be good for ACME SP, inc? --By a guy *OLDER* than rms ...cm
int main(int argc, char**argv)
It's not quite the same thing as SCO.
SCO was claiming Linux had copied code from SVR.
Oracle's claim would make the POSIX APIs illegal, regardless of who or how the code to implement those APIs was written.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Is this the ultimate sign of the almost absolute decline of slashdot? After reading the header and skimming the TFA ( to determine that it is a generic story about the problems if Oracle wins, and not about the state of the case as it goes to the jury ) I decide to comment about how badly the header got the facts, when I see that a third of the articles already say that.
Are the only two people in the world who didn't know how bad this story was, anonymous ( who has to be Florian Meuller because who else would post something so stupid ) and SoulSkill?
Slashdot my how you have fallen!!!!
Yes for example if your class impliments Comparable. Then it would be a derivitive work of the the Comparable interface with this logic.
If APIs end up being deemed copyrightable, so will code instructions. Oracle's money is from SQL. IBM invented it. IBM have lots of money and even more lawyers.
Microsoft got their pants sued off for doing basically the same thing
NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE SAME THING
Microsoft made unauthorized modifications to Sun's code.
Google made a clean-room implementation from scratch
You're taking a fairly clear case
AND YOU HAVE COMPLETELY MISCONSTRUED IT.
We live in a world where everyone wants to assign monetary value to things.
In such a world, the design of an API is serious work. We've all used good APIs and bad APIs. It is a very skillful operation.
Not saying if this is the ideal world or not... just that it is the world in which we live in. We live in a world of professions (lawyers, doctors, accountants...) where they protect their trade and professional quality.
One possible solution is if APIs want this protection, then they should have to explicitly declare it. The 'market' will to a large extent respond appropriately. Companies that declare their APIs copyrighted will be handicapped. There will be fewer compatible tools. Fewer developers will train themselves in the API...
There are already well-established anti-trust and anti-monopoly regulations to protect against abuse in such cases. They must charge 'reasonable' fees...
We've been through such cases before... for example with rail road operators.
Couldn't give a fuck... Suck it U$A... We, the world, don't care...
There are three different questions that have to be resolved in Oracle's favor for a verdict in Oracle's favor on this point:
1. (legal) Are the APIs subject to copyright protection,
2. (factual) Did Google infringe the exclusive rights of Oracle as copyright holder of the APIs,
3. (factual) Was Google's infringement outside the scope of the exception carved out of the exclusive rights under fair use.
Each logically only requires a response if the preceding question is answered in the affirmative. #2 is presented to the jury as a question they must answer as if #1 were answered in the affirmative, though the court has not ruled on it; #3 is presented to the jury as a question they must answer if and only if they answer yes to #2.
A ruling in Oracle's favor on the legal issue (#1) would not obviously not mean fair use was not available as a defense. Nor, obviously, would a finding of fact in Oracle's favor on #2.
But even a verdict in Oracle's favor (meaning that all three issues were resolved in Oracle's favor) wouldn't mean that fair use wasn't available, it would just mean that the jury in this particular case didn't find Google's particular use of Oracle's copyright-protected APIs was fair use. Fact findings are not, however, precedential or binding on future triers of fact, only legal rulings are. (And the only legal ruling related to the availability of fair use in this case is that, at a minimum, it is an available defense, because if it wasn't, question #3 wouldn't be put to the jury at all, or would be put to the jury with the same restrictions as #2 in that it was waiting on a legal ruling on the applicability of the defense.)
... or have other people also previously believed that an Application Programming Interface meant that a company was actually *encouraging* other people to write to that API???
So, the judge is saying that the bits can't be in the same order unless you have a license?? Really??
Great! The more obviously stupid all this becomes, the closer we are to the violent end of this madness.
Looks to me like this judge has no background to understand the potential impact of this. And the behaviour of Oracle on this matter, while legal, is reckless and dangerous for the industry at large, in particular small companies. They are literally helping to kill the American dream little by little. At some point common good has to prevail over the interests of single companies (or a lobbying group of them), and this is clearly one of these cases. Things like this are the ones that will eventually lead to the economic decline of America, because no matter how much money and new laws you toss at it, innovation and progress cannot survive in an ecosystem in which the only legal players are a handful of gigantic companies that milk the general population and every other business out there. So maybe software companies will start migrating out of the US to places where it makes more sense to innovate without fear of being sued, while in the State we will just have large monopolistic companies controlling our economies, providing poor services, dated products, and poor-quality infrastructure at sky-high prices.
This is serious, guys.
It's really not, for precisely the reasons you gave.
If this case were to go in Oracle's favour and if it were then allowed to set a precedent, the US software industry would be seriously damaged by legal infighting for a years to come. Even if a few large businesses on the scale of Google and Oracle could survive, in the same way that they play the patent pooling game to neutralise that threat from other big business while still screwing small businesses, innovation would die almost overnight and the next big software businesses would all be based outside the US. As the rest of the world looked on, bemused by the litigious culture of US business finally imploding, the total US economy would take a noticeable hit, Silicon Valley would become a historical footnote as investors fled to tech hubs in other jurisdictions, etc.
And so, if this were allowed to stand, it would suck for Google for about ten minutes, and then lobbyists backed by more money than has been printed in the history of humanity would descend on Washington and buy legislation to trump the court case and fix the problem.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The judge instructed the jury to assume that APIs are copyrightable because it is a matter of law, not fact. First the jury will decide if there was copying that cannot be justified as fair use. If they decide no, then the question is moot. If they decide yes, then the judge has to rule on the API issue--which he is obviously hoping to avoid, since there are no precedents for him to follow in this area.
So, yes, it's a bit backward. Normally the judge settles questions of law before questions of fact go to the jury. But this judge is being humble and cautious, and hoping to punt on what he realizes is major unsettled issue.
when they sued Microsoft for making "J++" way back in the day....which is why Microsoft even bothered to make C# in the first place.
Just lost all respect for that guy, what a tosser!
...if you develop a product using our language and/or compiler, it is ours.
Great.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I used to be strictly against the death penalty, and in principle I still am. However, there are some crimes that do not merely affect one or more people - they affect humanity as a whole for generations. Such crimes must be prevented with the harshest deterrents available.
The ramifications of a judgement that would make mere APIs copyrightable would throw back human development into the dark ages. The ensuing legal slaughter would not instantly terminate the majority of all free software development projects, but largely cripple the majority of commercial ones too. We are not just talking desktop software here - every little gadget with an embedded system is likely to use some API or other that might resemble some other API close enough for some demented judge to doom it.
I guess the lawyers feasting on the carcasses of the productive entities they destroyed with their court house word games will realize too late that parasites will not survive once their hosts have all died.
The US is right now trying to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand on copyright infringement charges and has had him incarcerated. The US spreads its abuse globally. The rest of the world will not continue its course in peace and freedom until the the US has more completely defeated itself. As Lincoln foresaw, the US will not be destroyed from without, but from within. The probelm is that with modern technology, the collateral damage will devastate the world.
Not in the world of the World Trade Organization!!
By international treaty and law, all copyrights are honored worldwide. Therefore, what is copyrighted in the U.S. is also copyrighted in Europe immediately, and vice versa (and Asia, too, technically all the GATT countries, which is pretty much everybody worth conducting business with).
So, unless you want to undo almost a century of globalization, this will affect legal software worldwide, unless and until copyright laws can be amended to more sane terms.
Regardless, this has "rush to the Supreme Court" smeared all over it.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Begging the question (Latin petitio principii, "assuming the initial point") is a type of logical fallacy in which a proposition is made that uses its own premise as proof of the proposition. In other words, it is a statement that refers to its own assertion to prove the assertion. Such arguments are essentially of the form "a is true because a is true"
Also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or "appeal to ignorance" (where "ignorance" stands for: "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false,
For example, imagine if we told people "Assume the judge accepted a bribe from Oracle. Is he guilty?"
Let us remind people the judge hasn't been proved not to have accepted a bribe from Oracle!
Those are the ones who really get screwed if somehow Android ends up not existing in it's present form with Dalvik because of this. Although I personally did not learn J++, if I had spent a lot of time and effort learning it, I'd be really mad. I have spent a lot of time and effort learning the Android API, and if it ceases to exist, like J++ did, because of some court case, can I sue both Oracle and Google for my time and hardship?
your legal system is sooo much broken.
This is the main reason why Oracle purchased Sun. They quickly realized that they try to charge Google for every handheld that is sold. But this is ultimately going to fuck everything up for the rest of us (businesses and consumers alike).
Oracle needs to go find a hole and die. >:(
Yep, this is why programmers and lawyers don't mix.
You're confusing Java's Interface keyword with the more generalized sense of the word. The Java API has been defined pretty strictly as the structure & organization of the java.* classes. Not even Oracle contests the implementation.
A file format is just another kind of API. If you can copyright a file format, does that mean it is illegal to write software that can read copyrighted file formats?
[MyProprietaryFormat]
[!--- If you are reading this file, you owe me $$$ --]
[/MyProprietaryFormat]
Design something cool
keep it secret
get it manufactured in china and
Sell it overnight on the streets/flea markets
????
Profit
Next product ....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
AT&T won or was close to winning from what I heard.
Berkely gave up and removed the AT&T unix code and replaced the missing bits with their own. It took years before 4.4lite was ready and Linux beat it to the punch as a result and it never caught up.
However, BSD is api compatible with the sysIII and SysV so a simple recompile would work most of the time. That is the difference as not a single line of Oracle code is in Andriod. It astounds me they can charge for something they do not even know that was developed independently and then demand billions in damages.
BSD and Linux will be on the line for sure as they have the same syscalls, syntax, and look athe same if its ruled copyrightable. SCO can rise from the ashes and quote this case ... look there is SED!
http://saveie6.com/
And some foreign country uses a backdoor put in all of the countries software which the US buys and uses it to shutdown the power grid, other utilities, police, fire, public health and even the military.
They could just walk in and take over.
Terrorists can more easily get access to software in other countries and hit us with a cyber 9/11. Which could conceivable kill more people.
Anything which would destroy the US software industry could have very nasty national security implications.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This reminds me of what happened to the GIF file format..Remember that?
It's easy to convert from one file format to another, now how about programming languages?
They have a hilarious anti-Linux rant where they claim Linux is unsafe for critical applications (like airplanes), Windows is more secure and safer (despite the fact that Windows malware on a system for computing weight and balance was responsible for a plane crash), and that Linux makes it easier for foreign spies, saboteurs and terrorists to attack us.
They even work 9/11 into their argument! OMG!
http://www.ghs.com/linux/security.html
http://www.ghs.com/linux/threat.html
"The 9/11 terrorist organizers had creativity, patience, and a desire to kill as many people as possible. The terroristsâ(TM) success and their continued ability to evade capture provides an example and encouragement to others. We must not turn our national defense over to Linux or any other operating system that is vulnerable to easy attack and subversion at all times. The 9/11 terrorist organizers, and all those whom they have inspired, are still out there, and they are still creative and patient. And if we make our national defense easy to attack, they will kill a lot more people. If Linux is deployed in critical defense systems, the result will be catastrophic."
WOW!
Sounds like a conspiracy rant, but it is a corporate website pushing their own OS!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
oracle will burn if this ever happens I am not personally going to burn their head quarters down but I could see millions of people rioting...
While it may be total bullshit in a criminal case, it isn't in a civil case, since a jury verdict in either direction can be tossed out if the court (either the trial court or an appellate court) finds that the verdict is unsupportable given the facts in the case.
Nullification only works to acquit defendants in criminal cases.
Modded +5 Informative, and yet dead wrong (at least, as it relates to the present case.)
It is true that in the US legal system, you can't appeal a jury's not guilty verdict in a criminal case.
However, you can certainly appeal a jury verdict in all other situations (e.g., a guilty verdict in a criminal case, or any verdict in a civil case.) And, even before getting to appeal, the trial judge can set aside the jury verdict (again, except in the case of a not-guilty verdict in a criminal case.)
Yeah, there is. Its called a judgement notwithstanding the verdict (or judgement non obstante veredicto, or JNOV.)
The only case where absolute jury nullification is possible in the US system is when the jury acquits despite the law in a criminal case.
It's all hypothetical, so who knows one way or another. My guess is that if the API is copyrightable, it will be so as a collection. In other words, individual interfaces are not copyrightable. They are facts. But the collection as a whole is copyrightable. So you should still be able to implement whatever you need for use, but not the entire thing.
Dumping didn't scupper US steel production; excess of supply over demand did. (When there's evidence that dumping is occurring, a countervailing duty is imposed.) US steel producers, with high overheads, can't cope with low prices. Suppliers in low wage economies can.
Yes, free trade enabled that, but it also lowered the cost of pretty much everything we buy. If the US closed itself off from free-trade, the ICs and electronics would still be made elsewhere in the world, and sold cheaply almost everywhere, but to buy those goods in the US would be expensive, and condemn the rest of the economy to uncompetitiveness. Look to the closed economies of the Soviet bloc to see how well *that* idea worked...
What happens to main() ? What happens if one org copyrights main(), other copyrights printf() and third one gets fork() ??? What happens of Oracle invokes this on vnode-vfs architecture which was introduced by Sun and adopted world wide *nix systems ? Sun has given so much to the software world with open heart, mind that if Oracle starts copyrighting every bit, they might as well kill the industry
Court of Justice of the European Union
Luxembourg, 2 May 2012
Judgment in Case C-406/10
SAS Institute Inc. v World Programming Ltd
The functionality of a computer program and the programming language cannot be protected by copyright. The purchaser of a licence for a program is entitled, as a rule, to observe, study or test its functioning so as to determine the ideas and principles which underlie that program
Press release: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/jcms/P_87138/
Judgment: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=122362&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=119888
long ago Microsoft sued Stac Electronics because, as I understand it, MS claimed that Stac abused/infringed their copyrighted/proprietary APIs in DOS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit
Java was specifically developed as a closed language+infrastructure at Sun, and was distributed under very restrictive license. For a long time, the only Linux port didn't come from Sun but had to be maintained by Sun's licensee.
Regardless of validity of suing authors of re-implementation, it was clear that Java was intended to be under complete control of Sun (and then Oracle -- oracle bought Sun just for that).
Everything else that currently has open source implementation, except for things that really should've never been implemented, leave alone reimplemented (Win32, .Net), was originally intended to be open. There is no "owner" of languages, interfaces, protocols and formats -- at worst, some names are trademarked. It's a non-issue, and Slashdot should stop posting this kind of FUD-mongering.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Forget the USA and come to Europe then. The CJUE just passed judgement and declared functions, APIs and source code NOT copyrightable.
See the act here (in french)
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-05/cp120053fr.pdf
So... if Google gets sued, everyone gets sued? Maximum trolling there, Dr. Dobbs.
I'm confused. Wasn't it settled a long time ago (Apple vs. Microsoft) that you could not copyright an interface?
Also, Linux an issue? Probably. Is Darwin an issue? Proabably; I don't know.
Jury Nullification is where a jury deliberately ignores the court's guidance and knowingly finds contrary to law. The jury have no say here in whether copyright applies. Here, the judge has already made it clear that the issue as to whether the items in question are copyrightable is one of law, and therefore HIS to decide - and he's not going to make a decision until later. He's just keeping things moving along and streamlined by asking the jury to assume that they are copyrightable, and tell him whether or not, if that case, Google infringed. If he finds that they're copyrightable, or he finds they're not but Oracle appeal and win, there will still be a jury decision to fall back on - so unlikely there'd be a need for another jury trial.
Jury nullification here would be for the jury to decide that they think that, yes, Google infringed, but that they (the jury) are not going to find them guilty. That's got nothing to do with the issue at stake here.
As for your last point - sorry, but juries try facts. They don't, can't and shouldn't be able to rule on law. Whatever you think you've learned from TV and the movies, law is massively technical - asking a jury whether something's legal or not is on a par with asking the paper boy whether or not you've got sickle cell anemia. Even in this case, if the judge finds that APIs can be copyrighted, he won't be deciding what the law OUGHT to be - he'll be trying to decide what the existing body of law actually MEANS in context. And even then he's quite likely to find his decision the subject of an appeal, and his reasoning poured over by other, equally technically-trained people.
What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
The legal system is not rational.
Look at the case that made software patents legal (Diamond vs Diehl) or the one that said a 3rd party unauthorized (i.e. not liked by the manufacturer) was infringing copyright because the computer made a copy of its software in RAM and the repair place didn't have a license (MAI vs Peak I think).
The legal system says merely running a program is copyright infringement, if you don't have a license, even if you are repairing a machine for someone who does!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It's because our legal system, like everything under capitalism, is for sale.
The rich & wealthy have been purchasing it for some time -- including the ability to put their businesses into bodies -- called corporations, through a process called incorporation. Then they get various rights and privileges that are normally reserved for people.
Most recently courts ruled that corporations are not restrained by campaign finance laws -- as it would be a violation of their constitutional protection -- given to people, of "freedom of expression".
Thus they can buy politicians at will under the protections of previously purchased rights giving them constitutional rights of free speech and such...
Incorporation didn't start in the US. If I remember, it came from Europe...
the US wasn't a leader in this wedge to give corporations full governmental powers (again, recent example -- the MPAA/RIAA forming their own police branch to investigate and police the new purchased agreements with all the Internet ISP's to police user's downloads. All outside of the government!...
It's like our money system -- it's privately owned by bankers. The "Fed" is a private company and is not accountable to the people of the US.
I.e. those who own our currency have no accounting to those who, by law, must use it, and only it.
The US is NOW inventing things, but before... we were capitalist traders who's main interest was buying and selling things (including arms) to both sides of a war... Wasn't until the WW's that the US took positions on things...-- espec. after we got attacked in WWII... That gave [sic] the largest capitalism-organization in the world (the US), the right to police the world... to protect our ability to trade (ultimately)... It's all about $$$$....
How the rich use it to create governments and laws to benefit them and keep the serfs down.